Kids Team Up To Write The Book On Their Working Moms

February 16, 1992|By Abigail Foerstner.

To join this team, you had to be an artist, a poet, a child with a working mom-and someone who could write a book.

Liz Claiborne Inc., the apparel manufacturer and design company, turned to the Harold Washington Library Center to select 20 Chicago schoolchildren to tackle the job of writing and illustrating a storybook in rhyme that will be called ``A Million Moms and Mine.``

No Saturday cartoon shows, basketball games or shopping sprees for these kids, as they met for nine weeks at the library to work on the book with children`s author and television writer Leah Komaiko. They met after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well to make their mid-December deadline, when a draft of the manuscript had to be completed.

Based on the draft, Komaiko finished the final manuscript that Liz Claiborne Inc. will publish in book form by Mother`s Day May 10 for free national distribution to schools, libraries and reading programs. (Liz Claiborne retail stores, including those at Northbrook Court and Oakbrook Center in the Chicago area will be selling hardcover editions for

approximately $15. Proceeds will support literacy programs in the U.S.) But even before publication, the young authors already feel like stars.

``When I told my family about this, they said, `Oh, let me get your autograph now,``` said Deeana Mendoza, a 5th grader at George Washington School, 3611 E. 114th St.

``This is a one-in-a-million shot. It could change your whole life to be part of this, so I don`t want to blow it,`` said Eugene Burwell, in 7th grade at the Beasley Academic Center, 5255 S. State St. ``My mom gives me the extra push to get me out of bed. She likes me to have the chances she didn`t.``

Deeana, Eugene and the 18 other grade-school students collaborating on the book with Komaiko shared ideas with the camaraderie of old friends, though most of them met each other for the first time at the group`s first session in October.

Teachers and principals who had noticed and nurtured their gifts for writing and drawing recommended them to the library for the book team this summer, when Claiborne launched Women`s Work, a national series of public art projects addressing social issues.

Komaiko`s 20 co-authors range in age from 7 through 12 and reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of Chicago`s neighborhoods. They came from public and parochial schools, from single- and two-parent homes. The bond they shared is that their mothers work at such jobs as graphic designer, bus driver, family business manager and phone company employee, in addition to the all-important job of being a mom.

``A Million Moms and Mine`` is the story of Myrna Mackelroy from Chicago, Illinois (read it in rhyme, please). Each child developed a character for the book.

Myrna, Komaiko`s character in the book, has become her alter ego, as far as the team is concerned. Other characters include Aristotle (invented by Eugene), the philosophical rapper of Myrna`s neighborhood, and Lilly Lu Lincoln, a TV anchorwoman`s shy daughter (invented by Renee Vickers, a 7th grader at the Hawthorne Scholastic Academy, 3319 N. Clifton Ave.).

At the beginning of the book, Myrna is ashamed of her mother, who doesn`t have a job. She envies the kids with working moms and particularly Lilly Lu, who wishes her celebrity mom could have more time at home. The menagerie of characters lead Myrna to respect her own mother and all the jobs a mother has to do.

Komaiko, a Chicago native who lives in New York, returned to her hometown to participate in the project.

Rhythm and rhyme, so important to her personal work, set the pace for the team project as well. The co-authors alternated between writing and illustrating, between working together and working individually, responding every step of the way to the idea that a big job-like writing a book-can be tackled as a series of little jobs.

As they met at the library for each session, they took breaks from the work to gather in a circle and make up rhymes about themselves and each other. ``My name is Ashley/And I want you to know I`m 4-foot something/But I`m sure to grow,`` rhymed Ashley Pletz, a 4th grader at Hawthorne.

Then it was back to work. Pencil, crayon and pastel drawings began to fill the pages of each student`s art book. Devon Johnson, a 6th grader at William Bishop Owen Scholarship Academy, 8247 S. Christiana Ave., sketched in dozens of mothers floating like butterflies across her paper. ``I`ve got 73 moms in the picture,`` she said as the drawing period came to a close.

Many of the children`s drawings will be used to illustrate the book.

The fast pace, the respect for individual contributions and the sense of doing something important kept the group motivated.

The team warmed up by composing and illustrating individual storybooks, a sort of dress rehearsal for the final book to which they all are contributing. Though fiction, the stories convey a deeply felt combination of pride and anguish that a mother`s work outside the home can bring to her children.